Bridesmaids

Le talent comique de l'actrice et scénariste Kristen Wiig, issue de l'émission Saturday Night Live, explose dans cette comédie décousue, caricaturale et fertile en situations cocasses.

C'est peut-être ce qui fait la différence entre Bridesmaids et bien des comédies-pas-drôles misant sur une distribution féminine : celle-ci a été écrite par des femmes et, au-delà de la caricature, il y a là-dedans quelque chose de vrai (dans le meilleur comme dans le pire).

À l'image des autres films produits par Judd Apatow, nous pourrions considérer cette réalisation de Paul Feig comme une variation intelligente, mais pas révolutionnaire, sur un genre cinématographique bien établi, où humour irrévérencieux et drame se côtoient avec une désinvolture franchement réjouissante.

Paul Feig's film has gambled on women, assuming that female moviegoers are sick of being reduced to man-starved, materialistic shopaholics by Hollywood, and want to see a mainstream comedy which gives them a chance to live and breathe as honest to god, funny, interesting people with their own point of view. Ladies, it's up to you.

Like all such films, it ends with a fairy tale ceremony, a prospect it has been subverting for two hours but just can't resist. Bridesmaids is both a tribute and a warning, a wedding film with a different slant but a familiar message: elope.

You could call this a ''chick flick,'' but Bridesmaids is so far beyond the ''he said, she said'' garbage that it should attract anybody looking for this massively entertaining comedy. Bridesmaids is easily one of the most engaging films of the year.

For longtime Wiig fans, this uneven, overlong, emotionally involving and discreetly ambitious film will represent a welcome and overdue step up from her popular sketch work on Saturday Night Live to something sustained and searching, not to mention pretty funny.

This latest effort from producer Judd Apatow also happily proves that a comedy anchored by women can be just as funny - and raunchy - as a bromance. The keys are a clever script, co-written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo, and the right ensemble cast.

Though the laughs are hit-and-miss, Bridesmaids lucks out in director Paul Feig, who has the gift of letting scenes play out just long enough to be both hilarious and heartfelt.

Bridesmaids, an unexpectedly funny new comedy about women in love, if not of the Sapphic variety, goes where no typical chick flick does: the gutter.